Embers is the debut urban fantasy from Laura Bickle and blends elements of a crime novel, with touches of a romance, wrapping them all up nicely into a delicious urban fantasy set in Detroit.

There is this urge within many urban fantasies to have the protagonist be an orphan and it certainly does make it easier to create a more emotionally troubled character; Anya Kalinczyk is another UF orphan. What this means is a great character, who’s survived the ‘school of knocks’ and come out the other end with strength, guts and determination. She’s independent, ok – she’s a little reclusive and anti-social, working in a male dominated industry and keeping up with the boys.

One thing I do adore about Anya, she’s not femanazi, yes, she’s working as a fireman (well, fire investigator after her promotion), but there’s not a focus on the difficulties of being a “female in a man’s world”, the story may be a little idealised, but if you tell people the ideal world often enough, eventually it may become reality.

I sadly have a limited attention span. I do read to be entertained, and although I love my books to stir me emotionally, perhaps provide world shattering ideas, I really don’t want to have to think about who is who and where their label is too hard; so one of the drawbacks for me was the number of characters in Embers. Although they’re all wonderful characters, none are really developed enough to move out of the peripheral, and there are just too many for comfort; you’ve got the fire-chief, the police investigator, the ghost hunters, various ghosts, priests, bad guys and general hangers on. The number isn’t the main problem, the issue is around them all getting the same level of build up, which makes it difficult to really understand if they’re important characters or not. One example is the ‘old man’ who runs the ghost hunters group, he’s mentioned early on, but we don’t meet him for quite a bit. Even once we do meet him, we’re missing the true extent of Anya’s affection for the old guy.

Still, one of my favourite characters has got to be Felicity, the ghost, who is very, very, peripheral. When she had the choice, upon her death, of ‘stay or go’, she decided that there were so many books that she hadn’t read, and she had just started Jonathan Livingtonston Seagull and wanted to know how it ended.“I’ve read most everything in this section. This gets boring.” She sighed. “But I have to say, if you ever get the choice to be a ghost, becoming on in a library is the way to go. Decades of entertainment await.” I do like a little bibliophile humour in my books.

Of course, then there is Sparky. Sparky is as cute as his name makes him sound. An elemental fire salamander, who also plays the role of familiar and protector to Anya. We’re not really too sure how he came to be, but there is a chance that Anya’s mysterious, deceased, mother created him for Anya’s protection.

Character development issues aside, Embers is a very enjoyable read. It’s light, but the story flows nicely on a winding path. The basic plot is original and well thought out and I think it’s a series that is going to develop into something great as Ms Bickle gets the chance to really pull the characters together.  Overall, it’s an excellent debut, with promise of many exciting novels to come.